Posted by Shady
Mon, 05 May 2008 05:30:00 GMT
So, another school project of mine ends up on the web: WorldBuy. It started life as my final project for CSE486 (Distributed Systems) but I liked it so much I decided to put it online.
Basically, you can click on a region and it will give you some general information about where you clicked. You can then search amazon for products related to that area. Products can be saved per region, and ranked so that a user can see what other people think are good products for a given place.
It's very, very, very beta at the moment. No user accounts, no per user places or products, and the search itself isn't particularly refined, but I think there is a lot of potential here.
It is also serving as a testbed for the new features I added to the geonames rubygem I wrote about in a previous blog post. The site makes use of both the paid account support, and the country info method. I made a custom rubygem with the new geonames features, and this site currently uses that.
I have a bunch of plans for features to add to this site, and I intend to keep working on this site. If you use it and like it, or don't like it, let me know!
Posted in School, GIS, Mapping, Cartography, Development, Ruby | Tags amazon, geography, schoolproejct
Posted by Shady
Sat, 03 May 2008 03:30:00 GMT
The geonames ruby gem is a really useful piece of software that makes it super easy to query the geonames web services. I just used it in a distributed systems project (more on that later) and I found it to be great. Today, however, in a fit of "oh-sweetjesus-the-server-is-down-before-my-demo" panic, I ended up purchasing some credits for the commercial geonames service, only to find that the geonames gem doesn't actually have the facility to use the paid service. So I added the functionality myself. It was actually pretty simple (the it only required changes to two files) and I think it could be used by more people then just myself who have a paid geonames account.
The two patches are attached to this article, and also posted on the issues page for the gem at google code.
I'm also working on adding support for the countryInfo webservice in the gem.
Stay tuned.
Posted in Ruby | Tags gem, geonames, patch, ruby
Posted by Shady
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:39:00 GMT
For a final project in one of my classes, I made some maps of New York State language usage and foreign born population (the only measure of 'immigration' that the census bureau keeps track of).
The maps and a discussion about how they were made can be found here
Share and enjoy, if you have any comments leave them attached to this blog post.
Posted in School, GIS, Mapping, Cartography | Tags immigration, language, newyork
Posted by Shady
Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:15:00 GMT
Sometimes,
slashdot isn't a complete waste of time:
//Both people are represented by an abstract class
public abstract class Person
{
public bool StrangersToLove { get; set; }
public bool KnowTheRules { get; set; }
}
//Possible thoughts
public enum Thought
{
FullCommitment
}
//Class
public sealed class Me : Person
{
public Thought Thinking()
{
return Thought.FullCommitment;
}
}
//The target of the song, notice that GetThought can only be called by passing in an instance of Rick
//which satisfies that she can't get this from any other guy
public class You : Person
{
private Thought whatHeIsThinking;
public void GetThought(Me guy)
{
whatHeIsThinking = guy.Thinking();
}
}
class Program
{
//The first verse
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var Rick = new Me() { KnowTheRules = true, StrangersToLove = false };
var Girl = new You() { KnowTheRules = true, StrangersToLove = false };
Girl.GetThought(Rick);
}
}
Yes, it's a rick roll in code.
Posted in Development, Random thoughts | Tags awesome, programming, rickroll
Posted by Shady
Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:50:55 GMT
I wonder if the same company prints both amtrak seatback pouch safety cards and airline seatback safety cards. They do look remarkably similar. I wonder if just one company makes all of them? Can I order my own custom ones for, say, my car? You know, for the lulz?
More research is needed.
Posted in Travel, Random thoughts
Posted by Shady
Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:06:59 GMT
Finally made it to Chicago, and the longest leg of the trip is over. Passed through most of Kansas at night, and Iowa, Missouri and Illinois today. For me, the "cool" part of the trip is pretty much over. I really wanted to see the southwest and the rockies the most, and it was very impressive to see all the scenery. The rest of the route is pretty much your standard, boring east coast route and while I'm not really excited about it, I do look forward to finally getting home.
Posted in Travel
Posted by Shady
Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:43:00 GMT
It's been a great trip so far been through California Arizona New Mexico and currently colorado. Seen some amazing scenery and towns. The amoung of stars you can see in the arizona sky at night is simply amazing. I really wish I brought my digicam but the iPhone camera will have to do. We topped out at around 7000 feet passing through Raton Pass into Colorado from Arizona. I definitely want to do this again. Next time I'll spring for a sleeper car. My back demands it.
Posted in Travel, Cartography
Posted by Shady
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:33:50 GMT
Well not really driving the train. Just riding it. But I've always wanted to take a train across the whole country and now I get the chance. San diego to buffalo. 52 hours. I'm really looking forward to it.
Posted in Travel
Posted by Shady
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:05:53 GMT
It arrived today and darned if it isn't super awesome. Messed around with ziphone to jailbreak it, but ultimately ended up using iFuntacular. Found a bunch of very cool apps, and even got my own version of hello world compiled and running. It's late and I'm sick of typing with my thumbs so more details tomorrow.
Posted in iPhone
Posted by Shady
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:50:00 GMT
This comic has never been more true. I'm staring at the DHL tracking page, and my refurb iPhone is in the DHL warehouse, in Buffalo. It's lonely. But it won't be here until monday. Oh well.
In the meantime I can amuse myself by reading up on the jailbreaking process, downloading the official SDK from apple (2041 MB? Xcode isn't even that big!), and seeing if anyone has ported my favorite command line tools to the platform.
Posted in Hardware, iPhone
